Impressions of Theophrastus Such eBook

Cetacean of world-wide fame had its origin in a peculiar
mixture of bitterness and eccentricity which, rightly
estimated and seen in its definite proportions, would
furnish the best key to his argumentation. All
alike were sorry for Merman’s lack of sound learning,
but how could their readers be sorry? Sound learning
would not have been amusing; and as it was, Merman
was made to furnish these readers with amusement at
no expense of trouble on their part. Even burlesque
writers looked into his book to see where it could
be made use of, and those who did not know him were
desirous of meeting him at dinner as one likely to
feed their comic vein.

On the other hand, he made a serious figure in sermons
under the name of “Some” or “Others”
who had attempted presumptuously to scale eminences
too high and arduous for human ability, and had given
an example of ignominious failure edifying to the
humble Christian.

All this might be very advantageous for able persons
whose superfluous fund of expression needed a paying
investment, but the effect on Merman himself was unhappily
not so transient as the busy writing and speaking
of which he had become the occasion. His certainty
that he was right naturally got stronger in proportion
as the spirit of resistance was stimulated. The
scorn and unfairness with which he felt himself to
have been treated by those really competent to appreciate
his ideas had galled him and made a chronic sore;
and the exultant chorus of the incompetent seemed
a pouring of vinegar on his wound. His brain became
a registry of the foolish and ignorant objections
made against him, and of continually amplified answers
to these objections. Unable to get his answers
printed, he had recourse to that more primitive mode
of publication, oral transmission or button-holding,
now generally regarded as a troublesome survival,
and the once pleasant, flexible Merman was on the
way to be shunned as a bore. His interest in new
acquaintances turned chiefly on the possibility that
they would care about the Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis;
that they would listen to his complaints and exposures
of unfairness, and not only accept copies of what he
had written on the subject, but send him appreciative
letters in acknowledgment. Repeated disappointment
of such hopes tended to embitter him, and not the
less because after a while the fashion of mentioning
him died out, allusions to his theory were less understood,
and people could only pretend to remember it.
And all the while Merman was perfectly sure that his
very opponents who had knowledge enough to be capable
judges were aware that his book, whatever errors of
statement they might detect in it, had served as a
sort of divining rod, pointing out hidden sources
of historical interpretation; nay, his jealous examination
discerned in a new work by Grampus himself a certain
shifting of ground which—­so poor Merman
declared—­was the sign of an intention gradually
to appropriate the views of the man he had attempted
to brand as an ignorant impostor.